AUTODESK REVIT is Building Information Modeling (“BIM”) software that allows users to elaborately design three-dimensional structures. REVIT can be used to design complex buildings all the way down to components and assemblies for use in a project. For example, a user can model an entire plumbing or electrical installation within a building.
Using REVIT or similar BIM software, users can lay out electrical conduit or other construction components within a building plan. In particular, REVIT includes generic templates for conduit and other construction assemblies, allowing the designer to include the assemblies within the plan. Similarly, REVIT templates for conduit and other components, such as plumbing or air conditioning ducts, can allow a user to draw a long run and easily visualize where the components will go.
However, these templates are for visualization purposes only, and are not useful for fabrication. As an example, a long conduit run of 50 feet would appear to be one long piece of conduit based on the generic REVIT template. But in the real world, this same run would be broken into multiple connected pieces of conduit for cost savings and transportation feasibility. The exact number of pieces and lengths would depend on the real-world assembly being used. Similarly, bends in the conduit may be generically represented as curved single conduit without consideration for whether a kick piece or curved attachments to straight pieces are appropriate. The generic conduit templates in REVIT, therefore, are not appropriate for actual fabrication purposes.
The graphical user interface (“GUI”) of existing BIM and REVIT systems does not allow a user to easily design with custom assemblies, such as plumbing or electrical assemblies. Existing GUIs allow a user to create or import custom components. A custom library of conduit parts with actual fabrication dimensions can be utilized. However, the GUI does not provide any easy way to convert a generic conduit layout into customized parts. Therefore, the user is stuck doing the same design twice. First, the user lays out the conduit with the design convenience of the generic REVIT templates. Then the user essentially redraws the conduit system by overlaying specific custom library components on top of the generic content. This is a waste of time. In addition, if the design changes, the user must painstakingly redraw the conduit run using the custom parts. Therefore, existing GUI limitations discourage design changes.
Existing GUIs present the same problem for other REVIT custom templates. For example, default REVIT plumbing and HVAC templates are also not useful for fabrication. The user is stuck with the existing GUIs because BIM and REVIT software dominates the market for construction design.
Therefore, a need exists for a system that modifies existing GUIs to easily convert between generic REVIT templates and custom fabrication-level content.